Formal Methods and Innovation Economy: Facing New Challenges

Formal methods (FM) are being actively developed nowadays. Still they find little use even in the target industry domains that require high quality, robust and standard-conforming software. Some of the difficulties in FM utilization are caused by unique characteristic features of the new Innovation Economy such as constantly growing number of new domains and technologies that calls for more and more experts who generate and possess knowledge. It is the knowledge formalization that is the prerequisite for FM application. This paper discusses features of the Innovation Economy that challenge FM practical use, considers positive cases of industrial applications of FM.Resting upon the analysis of those cases we suggest shifting the focus of FM development and extension to close cooperation with problem area experts and to promotion of the formalized approaches, techniques,and notations as interface language between problem areas and IT specialists.